Eskape Labs today announced the release of myTV.PVR, the company's first combination TV tuner with built-in MPEG encoder designed for Macintosh computers. With myTV.PVR, Mac users can watch live TV on their screen, plus pause and record their favorite TV programs any time they want, on notebook or desktop Macs.

As an external unit connected via USB 2.0, myTV.PVR is flexible and convenient enough to instantly turn any Mac into a full-fledged Personal Video Recorder. Users can watch live TV in a window or full screen, pause live TV with instant replay and schedule TV recordings on a daily, weekly or once-only schedule. myTV.PVR includes a built-in hardware MPEG encoder, so the Mac does not slow down while watching, recording or pausing TV. myTV.PVR also includes composite/S-Video and stereo audio inputs so users can connect to cable or satellite TV boxes, VCRs, camcorders or DVD players. Users can also record home video tapes to disk in an MPEG-2 format.

"myTV.PVR is possibly the most valuable accessory Mac users can buy. With myTV.PVR, the need for separate TV, PVR and DVD recorders are eliminated," said Scott Naylor, Macintosh Product Manager for Eskape Labs. "College students, business people, even home users will enjoy the way myTV.PVR adds convenience and value to their Macs. For multitasking or simply to conserve space, myTV.PVR is a terrific solution."

myTV.PVR provides dbx-TV stereo audio for quality TV sound and incorporates an hardware MPEG-2 video recorder for fast video on the Mac's hard drive without compromising overall computer performance. Video is compressed using a Conexant 416 MPEG-2 chip, compressing TV shows or home videos at a variety of transfer rates ranging from 1 to 12 Mbits/sec.

To ensure programs are recorded when desired, myTV.PVR supports Titan TV, the Internet electronic program guide. Programs can be stored on the hard drive or burned to DVD or CD (writing hardware and software not included), making it easy to transport or store favorite videos. MyTV.PVR is priced at US$149.

With this and front row on a mini I cant think of any reason not to set one up in my living room on a nice sized monitor and just chuck my old tv out the window. How long do you think we will have to wait on front row for the mac mini?

I am curious to see how this compares to a MythTV setup. I have a relatively nice PC that I use not often, and as soon as I replace the one piece of software that binds me to windows I want to transition it to a linux/MythTV box. Of course, if this little package is superior to what I could do with MythTV, I'll have a useless PC sitting around

I got one a month ago at Compusa. Did not get any picture on an Imac (20 ", 2 gzh, os 10.4.2) or a mac mini. Returned it, got another one. Never worked either. Finally I return that second one also.
Did not cost me anything but it was quite disapointing.
Maybe someone here will get more lucky!

Doesn't look like it can tune any remote boxes (i.e. digital cable or satellite).

I'd imagine you could kludge DTV to work, but you'd have to manually change the channel with your remote (defeating the PVR functionality).

I use an older DirecTiVo + TivoTool (http://www.tivotool.com -- donationware) to stream or download/burn my DirecTV shows. It's amazing how elegant this one OS X app is vs. the myriad of hoops you have to jump thru on Windows to do the same thing!